


Rattle This Scene

by Kalcifer



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Denial of Feelings, Other, Silly
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-30
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:47:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27275929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kalcifer/pseuds/Kalcifer
Summary: Mako's gone and gotten engaged to a stranger, and Cass is totally fine with that.
Relationships: Cassander Timaeus Berenice/Mako Trig
Comments: 13
Kudos: 14





	1. Brunch

**Author's Note:**

> I've got too many actual projects I'm working on and it was time for some nonsense instead. The Chime are good at that.
> 
> Important lore for this universe is that "the Chime" is the name of their band that they all refuse to admit is dead despite not having practiced in five years.

Despite the Chime's collective misgivings, as the one year anniversary of Aria's Vegas wedding approached, she seemed happier than ever. "I knew she was incredible, that's why I married her, but I hadn't realized how perfect we were for each other," Aria gushed over the weekly brunch that had taken the place of midnight snack meet-ups after she'd moved out. "Like, she always knows what I need to hear, even if I don't know myself. You know?"

"No," AuDy said, methodically cutting their omelet into ever-smaller squares. Cass had lived with them since college and still wasn't sure if they actually ate food or just cut it into non-existence.

"Don't worry, I totally get it," Mako said. He'd managed not to spill anything on his pink-blue-yellow-green windbreaker, which was impressive, since he'd insisted on using all four syrups to create "the ultimate breakfast experience". It was also disappointing, as all of Cass' attempts to sabotage the jacket to this point had failed and they were getting desperate.

Cass shot Mako a look. "Have you even dated anyone since college?" He couldn't have. Cass would have known. They lived together and Mako was clinically incapable of keeping his mouth shut. Cass would have known the instant a hot guy so much as winked at Mako. (They had known. Paisley Moon was a dark time in all their lives.)

"Oh, didn't I tell you?" Mako dug around in his pockets and pulled out a straw wrapper tied in a loose circle. "I'm engaged."

"What?" Aria asked.

"Hmm," AuDy said.

"How?" Cass asked. Fortunately, they were drowned out by the other two, so Mako didn't parse it well enough to be offended.

"Well," Mako said, drawing the word out. He was clearly savoring their reactions. "I figured if Aria could find somebody, why couldn't I? So I proposed to the first guy I saw come out of the roller rink. And he accepted, so now we're engaged."

Cass froze. It was a very Mako thing to do, and yet they couldn't wrap their head around it. Mako was getting married. To a stranger. What the hell.

"That's a terrible idea," AuDy said, because they were Cass' only ally in this world. "And need I remind you that you're currently banned from vetting new roommates?"

"Okay, first of all, if you had given Ted a chance you would have seen that he's actually a cool dude." Mako paused as if waiting for an apology. Given that apologies were a foreign concept to AuDy, Cass could only assume he was doing it for his own amusement.

"And second," Mako continued, "obviously I'm not having my husband move in with us. We're going to look for a place of our own."

"You and Cass and AuDy?" Aria asked.

"Me and Larry. Duh."

"Larry," Cass said flatly. They were aware they were being petty, but come on. Larry was the name of some guy in beat-up overalls and a baseball cap who came by to fix your heater. There was no way he'd have anything in common with flashy, ultramodern Mako.

"Uh-huh." Mako leaned back in his seat, looking far too pleased with himself. "I just thought you guys should know. You're all invited to the wedding, obviously."

"This whole thing sounds like a farce," AuDy said.

"Of course we're coming," Aria said, though she did nothing to deny AuDy's assessment of the situation. "When is it?"

"Hold on, let me check with Larry." Mako fiddled with his phone. "It looks like we're both free next Saturday, if that works for you guys."

Cass felt the familiar weariness of being the only responsible person in the room sink into their bones. It was accompanied by a sick twist in their stomach they didn't really feel like examining. "Mako, you can't marry someone you've known for a week."

"That's what you told Aria, too, and look how that turned out."

Aria, currently in the process of baling up her napkin, looked up. "I mean, I can't really argue with you, but are you sure you've thought this through? I didn't know much about Jacqui, but I knew I loved her. It sounds like you and Larry barely even talked."

"Aria. Come on." Mako gave his most charming, least trustworthy smile. "I always think things through."

"The Halloween party junior year." AuDy sipped their coffee, ignoring the face Mako made at them.

"Let's all calm down," Cass said, ignoring the fact that they themself were ready to do a few laps of the parking lot to clear their head. "Start at the beginning. Who is this Larry guy?"

Mako crossed his arms. "He's my fiancé, so maybe you should stop being so weird about him."

"Okay, but like… what else?" When Mako didn't have an immediate response, Cass prompted, "What's his last name?"

Mako stared at the ceiling for a second before shrugging. "Who cares? It's going to be Trig in a week anyway."

Cass took a deep breath and shelved their plan to track Larry down online to make sure he wasn't a serial killer. It was fine. Mako could make his own mistakes. He'd proven that many times over.

"Assuming he doesn't want you to take his name," AuDy commented.

"Or maybe you can both keep your names. That's what we did. My name is too much of my brand, and there was no way she was going to call herself Jacqui Joie." The opportunity to talk about her own idyllic romance was apparently enough to clear all of Aria's doubts.

Cass only resisted laying their head on the table by thinking about how sticky it would be. If no one else saw a problem with this, maybe they shouldn't either. They could just sit back and watch it happen and only show up long enough to get in an "I told you so" when it inevitably fell apart. It didn't seem like Mako was seriously invested in the relationship or anything.

It couldn't be that hard to break into the roller rink's records to track someone down, right? 


	2. Farmer's Market

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cass meets this mysterious Larry. They aren't impressed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Meaningless lore of the day: AuDy isn't here because anytime more than two members of the Chime hang out there are high chances of it becoming An Outing and AuDy is not going to engage with that this early in the morning. It was even worse when Aria still lived with them and insisted on picking up ingredients for her awful smoothies.
> 
> Incidentally, AuDy themself has no problem with mornings, as they're of the opinion that having a consistent sleep schedule just makes it easier for people to make demands on your time. The problem is that Aria is a morning person and Mako tends to be at that level of tired where you're going to crash in an hour but for the time being you're bursting with energy.
> 
> (This fic isn't entirely an excuse to come up with silly things to say about a modern AU Chime, but that was the initial concept.)

Honestly, Cass still didn’t know how you were supposed to choose vegetables. They could check for rotten spots, but whatever information you were supposed to get when you squeezed one was beyond them.

They kept meaning to look it up, but the question only ever occurred to them once they were already at the farmer’s market and staring at an array of bell peppers. And while they could theoretically get out their phone to check now, they had no doubt that Mako would sense it from whichever stand he was currently trying goat cheese samples at and rush over to mock them. They were sure they could figure it out.

They were in the process of comparing two apparently identical cucumbers when they caught a flash of orange at their side. “I don’t care if you forgot your wallet, I’m not buying you a muffin,” they said, turning to face it.

Then they froze. For all that the figure in front of them was wearing the same neon vest and lime green flannel, it was distinctly not Mako. The sound of Mako’s laughter rang out from two stalls down the aisle. Cass fought to keep from showing relief, or any emotion other than moderate annoyance.

“Oh, hey Larry,” Mako said once he came over to them. “You come here too? Nice.”

“Everyone knows the farmers have the best chocolate milk,” apparently-Larry said. “Wild that I’d run into you, though.”

Cass tried to smooth their glare into a more general frown. “You know that’s not particularly convincing when you’re wearing the exact same outfit,” they said. How had Mako even found someone who would go along with his awful fashion sense? Even worse, had Larry already owned clothes identical to Mako? It seemed unfair for there to be two eyesores walking around the same city.

“We’re just that in sync,” Larry said.

“Anyway, Cass, meet my fiance, Larry. Larry, this is Cass, my killjoy roommate.” Mako gestured between the two of them in a vaguely demonstrative fashion.

“Come on, you can’t tell me that I’m worse than AuDy.” Years of manners drilled into their head had Cass extending their hand to Larry before they could think about it. It was probably for the best. If Larry didn’t know how suspicious they were of him, he was more likely to show his hand.

Or, you know, some way to put it that was less creepy sounding. Cass wasn’t trying to dox Larry, they just wanted to make sure their friend wasn’t making an even bigger mistake than he knew. They already got a bad feeling from Larry. It was hard to get anything else from someone who would accept a proposal from someone they didn’t know.

Larry smiled as he shook their hand, oblivious to the sour turn their thoughts had taken. “Any friend of my future husband’s is a friend of mine.”

Cass couldn’t really call it an opening, given that it was the one piece of information they had about Larry, but they seized it regardless. “About that,” they said. “Why are you marrying Mako, anyway?”

“It was love at first sight, of course,” Mako said.

Larry nodded. “As soon as I saw his plastic jacket, I knew he was the one. Also, he told me what he had in mind and it sounded fun. We’re going to have a cake tasting tomorrow.”

“Can you even get a wedding cake on such short notice?” Maybe they’d have to put off the ceremony for long enough to come to their senses. Admittedly, Mako had never once shown signs of being sensible about his ridiculous plans, but Cass was willing to hope.

“Nah, but it’s not like the bakery has to know that,” Larry said. “And if anyone asks, we can just say we’re too in love to wait. Then anyone who tries to argue has to live with being the villain in a cheesy romantic comedy.”

“That’s good,” Mako said. “See, ideas like that are why I’m marrying you.”

“It’s not my wicked sense of fashion?” Larry batted his eyelashes at Mako.

And okay, that was more than enough of that. Cass had no doubt that, with Larry to egg him on, Mako would keep escalating, and they had zero interest in third wheeling for this sham of a relationship. Watching Larry playfully flirt with Mako made their stomach clench anyway.

“Okay, well, this was great, but we really do need to get going before all the best tomatoes are taken,” Cass said. “Come on, Mako.”

“Bye, honey!” Mako waved enthusiastically even as he fell into step beside Cass. 

It was just as well; it meant he wasn’t paying attention to the fact that they clearly had no destination in mind. Presumably they should go find some tomatoes.

Mako finally got bored of waving and turned back to face Cass. “Isn’t he great?”

Cass made a noncommittal noise in response. “He’s something.”

“It turns out Aria may have had a point with all that ‘true love’ and ‘soulmates’ stuff,” Mako said. “I mean, what are the odds that the first person I talked to would turn out to be this cool? Sure, the fact that I looked for someone who would go rollerskating helped, but even then.”

It was officially not Cass drawing the parallel, which meant it was fair game for them to mention their concerns. “Aria got lucky,” they said. “You remember how much she gushed about Jacqui for a month after literally bumping into her on the street?”

Mako made a face. “Unfortunately.”

“But every time you talk about Larry, you jump straight to the marriage thing. Do you even know when his birthday is?” Cass asked

Mako scoffed. “I don’t know when your birthday is, I just wait for that google calendar you set up to send me an alert.”

Cass refused to be distracted by the news that the time they spent maintaining their elaborate organizational systems wasn’t wasted. They could feel vindicated later. “I just mean, do you actually care about him, or is this all an elaborate way to make fun of Aria? Because you really don’t have to make big life-changing decisions to do that.”

“Sure, if you’re a coward.” Mako shrugged. “But seriously, everything is fine. I’m having a good time hanging out with Larry. If it turns out he likes arson or roller blades or something, I can just go off the grid. It’s not like he knows anything important about me.”

“That’s the problem,” Cass muttered. Even so, they were relieved to hear that Mako was willing to change his mind about this one. They just had to convince him, for his own best interests.


End file.
